things he's learnt by heart
by ellixian
Summary: It's the strangest feeling in the world to study her face, knowing he's never seen it before today, and yet feel like he read it, memorised it, a lifetime ago.


He should be absolutely terrified of her.

He _knows_ this world isn't real - and yet, he's spent years hiding from people like her, who wear their allegiance to Hydra on their sleeves and their faces. He's spent years warning students to keep their heads down, so people like her won't bring them in for questioning. He's spent years being conditioned to fear people like her.

But he knows, now, there's no one like her.

And he isn't afraid of her.

She holds herself like a soldier, here - iron threaded through her veins and steel cut into her spine. Hard and unyielding, armour in her eyes and her face and around her heart.

It's what allowed her to keep her head up when she first walked into the base, and venom instantly shot through the air - _That's Melinda May - She's the reason - Bahrain - she led the charge against us after Cambridge - what is that bitch doing here?_

She could hear every word. No one lowered their voices. No one hid their anger or their disgust or their fear.

He's never met her before, not in this life, but he finds that he can read every emotion that flickers - or doesn't - across her face.

And when she first walked in here - to find not the monsters and demons and ogres of Hydra propaganda, but orphans and victims and lost souls - he could see her heart break a little, all over again.

The buzz of activity that swirled through the base when she stepped in has died down. Daisy disappeared, heart in her eyes and lightning-fast, in the direction of the hangar, once she found out Trip was there. Ward and Simmons, still barely civil in their uneasy truce, had bickered their way to the weapons store.

And she had settled herself on a bench, studying, processing everything around her while awaiting orders - a field operative to the core.

"Agent May," he says, as he takes a seat next to her.

There's a beat, a moment of companionable silence, as though they've done this a thousand times before.

"I'm sorry," she apologises, "For... wasting time back there. For drawing my gun on you."

 _And on a kid_ , she doesn't say, but he knows she's thinking it.

"Don't say it's not my fault." She looks at him, every shade of hurt and regret and courage in her eyes, and he realises, with unshakeable certainty, _This is who she has always been_.

"I wasn't going to say anything," he protests - at least, he thinks he wasn't?

She studies him, almost fondly, before she seems to catch herself with the thought - _you don't know this man at all_.

"I'm Coulson, by the way."

It seems silly to introduce himself to someone Daisy claims he's known for more than half his life.

But that life is gone here, most of it, almost all of her, scrubbed from his conscious mind - although he's beginning to think she's still there, somewhere, in his bones.

"Coulson," she says, slowly, like she's testing the word, testing his name, against everything she has ever known. "Agent Coulson?"

"Not 'Agent', here," he corrects her. "I am - I was - a history teacher."

"I sent operatives after you," she recalls with a sigh. "Phil… right? Phil Coulson?"

Something about the way she says his name, a mix of affection and apology, makes his pulse skip in his chest.

"How much did Daisy tell you?"

"We were a little busy breaking out of the most secure facility in the world," she says drily, a hint of amused satisfaction in her words that would go unnoticed by most. "She did mention that things are... wrong here, though. That our memories and lives have all been changed."

"Are you... okay?" he asks, gently. He has access to bursts of his past - impressions, moments, feelings - that allow him to believe the weird, wonderful story Daisy and Simmons have told him. That there's a world where he saves rather than damns children. That he helps people, rather than hides himself away. It's a world he wants to be true.

She doesn't have that luxury.

To her, this is still the real world - or as real a world as she has ever known. And she's just made a choice - a series of choices - that have made her the most wanted woman in the world.

"Things haven't… felt right in a long time." She looks down at her hands, fingers tense and tangled together in her lap - the only sign that her nerves are fraying a little at the edges, that she's still adjusting to the choices she's made that have, again, destroyed the world as she knows it.

He watches her as her eyes flick across the room to the row of cots, holding people and children and families and all their hopes and lives and dreams.

" _This_ feels right," she says quietly. "This place. This fight."

A pause. She takes a deep breath, looks him in the eye.

" _You_ feel right." Her words are weighted with surprise and wonder - like she believes everything she's saying, but can't quite believe she's saying it.

 _You too_ , he thinks but doesn't say.

It's the strangest feeling in the world to study her face, knowing he's never seen it before today, and yet feel like he read it, memorised it, a lifetime ago.

They sit together, in silence, for a few minutes.

Finally, he says, "I was actually going to talk to you about our next mission. We need a pilot. Daisy says you're one of the best."

She nods, just once, and it surprises him a little how much relief he feels to know she'll be on board.

"I'll have your back," she promises, a quiet fire burning in her voice.

"You always do," he replies, without thinking.

She glances over at him, half a question in her eyes, _how can you be so sure?_

But, instead of asking it out loud, she shrugs, and favours him with a ghost of a smile.

"So," he says, to fill the silence the way he suspects he's always done, when it's just the two of them, "I have a question about the blue soap."

She clears her throat to hide something that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.

He still doesn't know many things about her, and who they were to each other.

But he remembers, now, how he has always loved making her laugh.

"Skye -" she begins, then corrects herself. "Daisy did say you might ask me about that."

She turns to face him, mischief dancing in her eyes, and he gets broken flashes of a mission from years gone by - _Russia and cats and vaults and flashlights and the sunshine in her smile_ -

 _You came back for me_ , he thinks, and he's not sure if he means twenty years ago, or this afternoon.

But, as he studies her face, here and now, in this world that has twisted them both out of shape, he's sure of one thing.

There are many things he's learnt by heart.

She's one of them.


End file.
